Taking a big breath, he lets it out slowly before continuing. “If we bring in Abigail, then we’ll have doubled our number in six months. And now we’ve got to consider Wimberley with every op. So instead of maybe an op or two a month, we have several queued up and ready to go right after this one. It feels like it’s getting away from me.”
I stand in front of him, pulling his eyes back to mine. “It’s just that the problem is so much bigger than we could have ever known. So now we hafta balance what we know and what we can reasonably do without getting caught. And the more people we bring in, the more we risk exposure. And on top of everything else, our data hasn’t been correct.”
He’s nodding along with me, his eyes once again downcast.
“But we’ve made great choices in personnel. I mean…Jake? He can go anywhere and everywhere that has a router. Parker? Literally would fall apart without her. Rafi? Dude could shoot the nuts off a gnat. Omar? Calm, cool, collected. Always. Except for when it comes to Anders. And now Abigail? She’s, what? Five-six? Maybe? I didn’t even know what was happening until I was on the floor, looking up at her.”
That finally nets a small chuckle from my friend. “Yeah, I think you’re right about her. I’ll fire off a message to Jake and have Parker slip a tracker in her pocket.”
“Already done,” I say, relieved to see him a little lighter. “She was kind of annoyed I hadn’t assumed that’s what she’d do.”
DB laughs a little louder, shaking his head. “You know, I really don’t remember how we managed without her. She’s got a lot of skills.”
“Yeah. But Park’s surprisingly good at the espionage stuff.”
A few months back, we got her in as a cocktail waitress at a party that featured trafficked teenagers who’d been forced into sex work. We took the suppliers and allowed social media to help take down the rest. To facilitate the second part of that equation, we had Parker slip listening devices into the pockets, purses, and man-bags of the frequent fliers. She had a blast working with Jake to expose several influencers.
“Said she used to shoplift at the mall as a teenager. A lot.”
We laugh about that, and I make a note to bring her in more. As much as I loathe asking DB personal things, there’s something more important than the state of his knee that I can’t put off anymore.
“DB, I don’t like to ask, but real talk, how much does working on these ops fire up that bullshit in your head?”
He runs a large hand over his smooth scalp and swallows audibly. “It’s been getting worse.”
“Is that why you like Ronan? So you don’t have to be so involved with the operational logistics?”
His silence speaks volumes.
Putting my hand on his shoulder, I finally speak my mind. “DB, you don’t have to do this anymore.” He tries to interrupt me, but I plow through. “You’ve served your country admirably. And the Guardians didn’t start with five people. It started with you and me. Whatever you decide, I’ve got your back.”
He lets out a heavy breath and nods. “I’m good for now, but I’m grateful for your support. I’ll let you know when it gets to be too much.”
“Okay. Holding you to that.”
“Not to change the subject,” he says, leaning on his cane. “But in regard to Abigail, do you think I can put Ronan on it and have him work with Jake to flush out her background and get her psych eval?”
“I know you can. He’ll take care of it. He feels terrible about how tonight went, even though we were just working with the data we had.”
“I know it wasn’t his fault, but…part of bringing him in was to give us more accurate information so we could avoid these mistakes.”
I wonder if his bigger concern is that he can’t trust Ronan enough to manage the more involved operation logistics.
“Man, DB, maybe with what we do that’s just not possible. Maybe the standard shouldn’t be that nothing goes wrong. Maybe the standard should be that we are prepared for anything and everything.”
He takes another big breath and lets it out through gritted teeth. “I don’t disagree with you there. And we’ve been assuming that the data was good because it came from a known government source. I’ll start having Jake verify the details.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I think that makes sense, but we don’t have to have it all figured out now. We’ve got another meeting on Friday about next week’s op. Maybe a couple days’ perspective is what we need.”
“Yeah…that brings up something I need to talk to you about.”
I know DB as well as anybody, and he’s definitely wearing his bad news face right now.
“All right, spit it out.”
“Ronan wants to be in the field on this next one.”
I widen my stance and cross my arms. “Absolutely not.”
